The ship was loaded with gold coins, copper ingots, ivory, and weapons when it crashed on the west coast of Africa.

Nearly 500 years later, Kapaandu Shatika, a bulldozer operator working at a Namibian diamond mine, accidentally uncovered pieces of the ship’s debris in a lagoon where he was excavating sand, and has helped solve the mystery of “Bom Jesus,” a Portuguese trading ship that went missing in 1533.

According to the Archaeological Institute of America, the discovery also paints a picture of what the final moments were like for the people on board the ship. It likely carried a cross-section of 16th century Portuguese society, with both personal luxury items and ordinary sailors’ tools on board.

But most of the passengers likely suffered the same fate: starvation in the arid Namib Desert. No written accounts of survivors have ever been found.

After the initial discovery of the debris in the Namibian desert, the diamond mining company Namdeb called Dr. Dieter Noli from the Southern Africa Institute of Maritime Archaeological Research, who examined the debris and recognized immediately that a piece of rusted pipe was in fact a part of a ship’s cannon.

John Foster

Noli said he knew that the miners were bound to come across a shipwreck sooner or later, and told the company to contact him if they did.

“I had been preaching to them for a dozen years that one day they would find a shipwreck, and to let me know when they do,” he told Fox News.

The wreckage was originally discovered in 2008, and was difficult to excavate because it rested 7 metres below the ocean floor. The diamond mining operation created an artificial lagoon, which allowed some pieces of the ship to be exposed near the surface.

And now details of what was discovered are beginning to emerge.

De Beers

According to Namdeb, a total of 5438 artifacts were found on the ship including 2159 near-mint condition gold coins worth $16.5 million.

Though the wreckage and its contents belong to Portugal, the Portuguese government says it will allow the items to be put on display at the National Museum of Namibia in Windhoek, the country’s capital.

Archaeologists say they also found a human foot bone preserved inside a leather boot, which is being kept along with the rest of the ship at a secure storage facility near the mine.

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The discovery of roughly 20 tonnes of copper ingots is particularly significant because the copper — toxic to marine bacteria — may have preserved the wooden parts of the ship that otherwise might not have survived.

“Wooden remains would normally have been eaten by organisms, but the poison would have protected part of those materials” said Bruno Werz, a marine archaeologist who helped with the excavation.

Archaeologists have also confirmed that the wreckage belonged to the Portuguese vessel “Bom Jesus,” or “The Good Jesus,” which was passing through an area Portuguese sailors called “Hell’s Gate” when the ship ran aground. As its name suggests, the area now known as The Skeleton Coast is a treacherous section of west-African ocean, and the site of thousands of buried shipwrecks.

The Bom Jesus is an important piece of global heritage; a European vessel headed to Asia with a cargo of German copper ingots, West African ivory, and Portuguese gold. After the discovery, the ship was placed under the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, of which Namibia is a signatory.

Dieter Noli

Dieter Noli still remembers vividly the discovery of the gold coins.

“I couldn’t believe it. In a matter of 45 minutes, I recovered 11 kilograms of gold coins, and they were in mint condition,” he said.